Sony BMG Reaches Deal With Imeem

Sony
BMG Music Entertainment has agreed to make its music available to online social media network imeem.com, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Representatives for imeem and Sony
BMG declined to comment Wednesday.

Meanwhile, representatives for Vivendi's Universal Music Group and EMI Group confirmed Wednesday that they are holding talks with imeem for possible content partnerships.

Sony BMG is the second major label to reach a content agreement with San Francisco-based imeem, which enables users to share music and video content.
Warner Music Group
concluded a similar deal with imeem in July.

Imeem also has agreements in place with independent labels such as Nettwerk, Beggars Group, Matador Records, XL Recordings and other labels distributed by leading indie distributor companies IODA, The Orchard, Redeye Distribution and others.

In exchange for making their content available to imeem users, Warner and the independent labels receive a cut of the ad revenue that imeem generates.

Registered users of imeem can post songs or videos on their accounts and share them with other users. If imeem has a content deal with the recording artist's label, users can stream the songs or videos in full. If no deal is in place, users see or view a 30-second snippet of the song or video.

Imeem has one of a growing number of new online social networks that allow music fans to share and listen to music online. When imeem first launched its ad-supported interactive music service in June, none of the major labels agreed to participate. But sustained declines in recorded-music sales have forced the majors to be more flexible in considering new distribution platforms.

Indeed, Warner had filed a lawsuit against imeem in May accusing the company of copyright infringement. The label later dropped its suit after it reached an agreement with imeem two months later. Sony BMG did not have any outstanding litigation against imeem.

The addition of Sony BMG provides an important boost to imeem. In 2006, the label boasted the second largest U.S. market share in recorded music, with 27.4% of total album sales, exceeded only by Universal with 31.6%, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Its catalog includes major hitmakers like Sean Kingston, Beyoncé and Carrie Underwood.

Most of the attention on the music industry's digital initiatives has been focused on the sale of individual song downloads, such as those at Apple's
iTunes Store and
Amazon.com
, which on Tuesday began selling restriction-free song downloads that can be played on any handheld music player. (Most of the songs sold at Apple's iTunes Store can only be played on the iPod.)

But as the growing popularity of social media networks like imeem, Pandora and CBS'
Last.FM demonstrate, music listeners are increasingly being drawn to online music communities where the emphasis is on streaming music, not downloading. A key advantage that imeem has over those two other sites: Users can stream individual tracks on demand.